Okay, we’re a little scatterbrained today. It’s the cusp of a three-day weekend, after all.

As the headline suggests, so many neat things kept popping up today, we decided to throw them together and add a follow-up to this morning’s first Community Update to include them all.

Did you become a social worker to change the world?

Bob Poole wrote another awesome article about the Freak Revolution. This time, I was flipping out while Pace read it aloud to me, devoutly hoping that it ended with someone who was either already a FR member or who would be by the end of today (Bob’s a member, so it all worked out). It’s incredibly cool.

Project Mojave & The Liberation Manifesto

Johnny Truant and Jonathan Mead and a bunch of other cool people (like Dave Navarro) have gotten together and are doing incredibly awesome things. Things like a 3-month course to get people out of their day jobs and into their dreams.

The last chance to be a part of it is today, so we couldn’t wait to share this tidbit. We think it’s going to rock. (: Check it out here. (Warning: video starts playing automatically, and is difficult to shut off.)

Also, Jonathan Mead wrote a really fucking awesome kick-ass manifesto, which we highly recommend you read.

Clutter Clearing

The sweet, darling Lisa Baldwin is doing a clutter clearing course, starting Monday, which will help you organize your stuff so you can get shit done.

And you’ll like working with Lisa. She’s one of our favorite people - and a fellow Freaky Revolutionary.

and, late-breaking news from the personal lives of Pace and Kyeli…

Our landlord, awesome dude that he is, gave us a full week off our rent this month for all the inconvenience of dealing with the mold and the ensuing repairs and guys trekking in and out of the house at odd times and having our cabinets ripped out and our cats terrorized.

Sweet!

Okay, that’s really it this time.

Have a fabbity fab fab fabulous marvie-darvie Memorial Day weekend (or minus Memorial Day, depending on your country and your choice). We’re gonna go spend some money on something fun! (Well, Kyeli is. Pace will hoard her half. After we split the cost of dinner.)

Ta!

I just finished reading Listen First - Sell Later by Bob Poole. It was informative and useful to me as an entrepreneur and a marketer. There’s some good concrete advice in there that I have taken to heart and will act on. Blah blah blah. Because that’s not what impressed me the most about the book.

What impressed me most about the book is what a wonderful world we would live in if every salesperson read it and took it to heart. He talks about how salespeople are perceived as sleazy, why it got that way, and how to be a successful salesperson (or really, a successful person) without being sleazy in any way.

I dog-eared about 20 pages on my first read through this book. Here are some quotes from the book; some of the most exciting “A-ha!” moments and some of the passages that inspired me the most.

Stop being a salesperson. Become a solutions provider. You’ll be much more productive. It’s more fun. And, it’s the right thing to do.

Start compiling a database of every person you meet.

And wow! Near the end there’s an amazing chapter about love overcoming fear. This is not just a book about sales or marketing. It’s a book about life and how to live it well. It’s written by a warm, caring man, and his passion for life and people shines through on every page.

Read it. Be informed. Be inspired.

I just finished reading my copy of Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation, and I’m excited to share my review with you!

Here goes.

Wow, Pam Slim has really got her work cut out for her. How do you get everything you need to know about quitting your corporate job and starting your own business into one book? You can’t, of course. Luckily, that is not what Escape from Cubicle Nation attempts to do.

What it does do is provide a wonderful overview of everything you need to know. Pam doesn’t delve deep into every area of entrepreneurship (I admit to feeling intimidated when she rattled off the list “sales, costs, expenses, taxes, interest, profitability, assets, liabilities, capital…” without explaining them) but it’s okay, because she does give you signposts for where to learn more about the pieces you’re not comfortable with.

Let’s jump right in to the page-by-page comments. Here are my thoughts on each of the pages I dog-eared while reading.

p.17 It’s not the life we were meant for

Pam peppers the book with excellent and inspiring quotations. I loved this one, from Paul Graham, in “You Aren’t Meant to Have a Boss“:

“I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I’d only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They’re like different animals. I suspect that working for oneself feels better to humans in much the same way that living in the wild must feel better to a wide-ranging predator like a lion. Life in a zoo is easier, but it isn’t the life we were designed for.”

This speaks to me on a deep heart and soul level. Not just corporate jobs, or jobs in general, but a lot of things about the world today.

p.25 Becky

Hey! I know who Becky is! That’s not just any Becky, that’s my friend Becky. (:

p.77 What to do when you flip out and go into a downward spiral of doom

Pam’s advice:

1. Immediately call someone you trust and ask for encouragement. (In a later chapter she talks about how to make friends with awesome people so that you can have someone trustworthy to call.)
2. Get physically out of the situation. Changing your environment can help break you out of the cycle.
3. Pull out a folder of things that remind you of your worth.

This is so cool! Kyeli and I were talking about this just last week. We created a “motivation” folder full of people telling us how much they liked our book, how much we’ve helped them in their relationships, and all sorts of other things. We’re planning on putting some of it on our wall, but having a folder for it is another excellent idea.

p.83 Choosing between a crack pipe and wheatgrass juice

Pam’s “crack pipe” story spoke to me deeply. Kyeli and I were in the middle of intense discussions about reworking our entire business, and we were both very scared. After reading Pam’s story, it’s crystal clear. We were afraid of the crack pipe!

Wait, I just realized that this won’t make any sense to anyone who doesn’t already know what I’m talking about. The “crack pipe” is Pam’s metaphor for a fast-paced, high-test, stereotypically “successful” business life. It’s the temptation of fame and gold stars. Pam writes, “I realized I was meant to be at home writing blog posts, changing diapers, and slowly chipping away at my dream business. I told the client no, tossed the crack pipe in the trash, and took a big swig of wheatgrass juice.”

Go, Pam!

p.84 Depleted vs. spent

Yes! This puts words to something I’ve been trying to put my finger on for years. Sometimes I feel exhausted but good, and sometimes I feel exhausted and bad. Pam explains it perfectly as the difference between depleted and spent.

Depleted is when you exhaust yourself by doing things you don’t really want to do. Spent is when you exhaust yourself by doing things you do really want to do. It’s how you feel after a really good workout that you enjoyed, or after a really intense conversation that ended up at a happy conclusion. Now that I have words for these two different states, I feel like I understand them much better. Thanks, Pam. (:

p.99 Yay, the E-Myth!

I’m so glad Pam mentioned the E-Myth. The E-Myth (the Entrepreneurial Myth) is that if you’re starting your own business so you can do more technical work, or do it your own way, then you’re setting yourself up to fail. If you don’t enjoy the business aspect of business, then you won’t enjoy owning your own business, because there is a lot of business in business.

p.101 quoting Jonathan Fields, Awake at the Wheel

“Find something you’re madly passionate about, surround yourself with people you love to be around, work your buns off and make a ton of money… as a byproduct of the fact that you’re having the time of your life and contributing value to the world along the way!”

YEAH! *jumps up and down*

p.154 Do You Really Need a Big House in the City?

OMG! We could move somewhere else, maybe even somewhere we could be legally married, and save TONS of money! For some reason I never seriously considered this option. But it’s a super important thing to think about, at the very least as a backup plan.

This chapter is chock full of concrete ideas for how to reduce your expenses without changing your money mindset to “scarcity” instead of “abundance”.

p.188 Don’t badmouth your competitors

Earlier on the very day I read this chapter, Kyeli and I were talking about the exact same thing. We saw a billboard that we interpreted as a passive-aggressive swipe at the company’s competitors, and launched into a tirade about what bad marketing it is to badmouth your competitors.

p.200 Juan, the Gang Member Coach

I love this bit. It made me laugh out loud when I read it the first time, and I’m laughing again as I write about it. Pam talks about unlearning corporate jargon-speak, because it will completely alienate real-world customers. She suggests envisioning giving your speech (or reading your web copy) to a gang member, because a gang member won’t put up with any bullshit or wishy-washy words. Here’s a quote from the book:

Joe, VP of Alliance Partnerships: “And as you can see from my deck, by creating a strategic partnership that focuses on key enablers of the new paradigm, we can leverage out-of-the-box thinking and deliver an integrated solution to our end-users.”

Juan, the Gang Member Coach: “Joe, what the f**k are you talking about?”

LOL!

p.210 Perfectionists are Losers

It’s easy to plan, wait, and prepare until everything is perfect. But in the real world, it works much better to get something out there, anything, then tweak and improve it based on feedback from your customers. As Seth Godin says, “Fire. Aim. Aim. Aim.” In fact, my friend Erica said the exact same thing recently.

p.250 Dealing with critical comments

Pam once received a comment that said,

“I would love [this site] if only the privileged would acknowledge how lucky and privileged they are and how their ‘advice’ applies to only other privileged kids.”

Pam writes, “I tried to carry on a conversation with the commenter, but nothing I could say would satisfy him — in his mind I was a rich jerk and nothing could change that.”

Wow. Once I received a comment exactly like that one. It really tore me up at the time, but I think Pam is right; the best solution is to ignore it and move on.

p.253 How to Shop for Benefits

Awesome chapter, Pam. This is something I’ve been putting off, and now we have a place to start. Thanks!

p.275 Different communication styles

Cool! Pam talks about different commmunication styles, a topic near and dear to our hearts. (: In this context, she’s talking about how to explain your business to skeptical friends and family. I give Pam’s communication advice a gold star. (:

p.279 Some relationships will not survive your transition from employee to entrepreneur.

Pam shares advice on to make this difficult process less painful, and ways to tell whether it’s the right decision. This particular issue has been a rocky one for me. Lots of my non-entrepreneur friends don’t get it, and their skepticism drains my passion and enthusiasm for our business. I’ve started being more selective about who I talk about our business with, and that’s been helping, although now the problem is that I have so few people to talk about our business with that I’m often bursting at the seams with excitement!

p.281 More good communication advice

Pam talks about how to bring up the “I want to quit my cushy corporate job and start my own business” conversation with your spouse. She talks about:

• choosing a low-stress moment
• choosing a calm and non-distracting environment
• really listening to your spouse’s concerns
• reciprocation
• making a plan to continue the conversation
• not via phone or email

and several other tidbits of good communication advice. Another gold star!

Here’s my own two cents of communication advice to piggyback on Pam’s:

• not when either of you is hungry or sleepy
• use “I” statements
• one or both of you might want to check in with each other, especially if things get tense.

pp.310-317 OMG, these checklists are ridiculously useful.

OMG, these checklists are ridiculously useful. Even though we’ve already started our business, it looks like there are some important steps we skipped. I want to say more here but I’d end up saying “OMG, these checklists are ridiculously useful” over and over again.

p.319 Now comes the first part where I actually cry. (I’m not counting tears welling up. I lost count of those.)

“Will I be a better, smarter, more compassionate human being for having attempted this, regardless of the outcome?”

p.320 The grand finale, where I bawl my eyes out.

Slow down and read this bit out loud. It’s very powerful.

“Now you are here, peering over the edge.

This is it.

No amount of data, checklists, spreadsheets, focus groups, analysis, or information is going to tell you if it is the right time to quit your job.

It is a leap of faith. You can choose to take it or not.

If you choose to leap, congratulations. Welcome to the other side. I have been waiting for you.

If you choose to stay, I support you. When you are ready, I will still be here.”

Holy shit, Pam. What an amazing book.

If you’re reading this, and you wonder what it might be like to quit your job and start your own business, or if you’re a recent entrepreneur and you want to feel more of the fire that inspired you to choose this path, then I highly recommend this book.

Here’s a link. Escape from Cubicle Nation

We self-published our book, The Usual Error, and today we’re going to tell you how you can write and self-publish your own book, too.

Here’s the thing. We’re just regular people. We’re not rock stars, we don’t have Ph.D.s or lots of other letters after our names. We’re not rich. We’re not famous. We’re not perfect writers; we make spelling and grammar mistakes. We had day jobs and not a lot of free time. And we still wrote a book.

If we can do it, that means you can do it too.

Here’s how!

1. Write the first draft
2. Edit it yourself
3. Have others edit it
4. Copyright page
5. Book design and cover design
6. Printing, fulfillment, and retail
7. Marketing
8. Rest on your laurels!

1. Write the first draft

There is a Step Zero: figure out what you want to write about, but I’m assuming that if you’re reading this with intent, you’ve already done your Step Zero. Another part of Step Zero is deciding to self-publish instead of traditional publishing. Here’s why we think self-publishing is better than traditional publishing, but of course it’s your decision.

Since we had multiple authors (first three, later two) we wrote the first draft of our book on PBwiki. This had the added advantage of being in HTML, which made it much easier later on to create the e-book and the Kindle version.

But if you don’t care about ebooks, Kindle versions, or multiple-author collaboration, then you can just use whatever word processing software you wish. Microsoft Word is good, because it imports well into Adobe InDesign, which is what we used for our book design.

The trick here is finding time for it, staying focused, and making progress. Keep up your motivation, make writing a habit and part of your daily routine. Remember your goal and let that feed your passion.

We started writing our first draft during NaNoWriMo, in flagrant violation of the rules. (: Still, it helped us stay focused and make it part of our routine, since many of our friends were also making writing a priority. The NaNoWriMo mantra of “December is for editing” also helped us, because it allowed us to write as many words as possible without worrying about every word being perfect. For the first draft, just get words onto paper. Everything else comes later.

Not counting the breaks where we didn’t work on the book for a while, we finished the first draft in two or three months, mostly by taking an hour to write each evening and sticking to that schedule. This got us to a 43,000-word first draft. If you write only 500 words a day, and you’re just one person, you can get to 43,000 words in three months, too!

2. Edit it yourself

After you’re done with your first draft, hooray! Go out and celebrate! Now comes the editing.

Here’s how Kyeli and I did our self-editing. For the second draft, we went over every single chapter of the rough draft and edited it for grammar, flow, tone, and understandability. Since we had multiple authors, sometimes the tone changed, and that was disconcerting. We also came up with a style guide that we stuck to.

• Singular “they” is okay.
• “I” is okay in stories and examples, but not okay in the main text.
• Title case for stories and examples, sentence case for chapter titles
• Punctuation inside the quotes.

and so on and so forth. It’s good to have a guide, like for instance the Chicago Manual of Style, but as long as you’re self-consistent, you’re probably okay. Later, your editors and beta-readers will tell you if your grammar choices are distracting. That’s all that’s important. Since you’re self-publishing, you’re not trying to please The Man. You’re trying to please your readers, who are real people just like you. As long as your style and grammar choices aren’t distracting, it’s all good.

The second draft took us about five weeks, and we made some major revisions. After we finished, we stopped using PBwiki since we weren’t editing in parallel anymore; we were working together. We created one big HTML file via copy-and-paste and an emacs macro to replace wiki markup with HTML tags, and from then on we used the HTML file as our master copy.

For the third draft, we printed out our second draft, set aside a big chunk of time, spent the day at Austin Java, and read the entire book to each other out loud. Any time something didn’t sound perfect to either of us, we’d get out a red pen and mark it. We completely rewrote one chapter that didn’t make sense in its initial form (Chapter 21), and that we did on the laptop, but the rest we did with paper and red pen, and merged our changes into the HTML file later. We did this for two long days, for a total of about 24 hours.

We must have done a good editing job on the second and third draft, because at this point we were ready to send our book out to external editors. It’s a good idea to keep self-editing over and over until you either don’t have any more changes to make or you find yourself stuck in a rut. So when you’re ready…

3. Have others edit it

Next, we asked our friends to help us edit the book.

We turned our third draft into a PDF using PDF995 and printed out a bunch of copies at Kinko’s. (I’m sorry, “FedEx Office”.) We mailed them to some of our friends who had volunteered to edit the book. We gave them a three-week turnaround time to give us their edits.

After we received all our friends’ edited copies, we went back to Austin Java, pushed a couple of tables together, and laid out all the editors’ copies side by side. We went through all the suggestions for page 1, then all the suggestions for page 2, and so on. That way, if two editors suggested the same change, we’d give it extra weight, and if two editors disagreed on something, we could take that into account right then instead of forgetting about it by the time we got to the other person’s comments.

This process took about eight solid days, and it improved the book a ton. Some of the suggestions we got were worth repeating:

• Search for every occurrence of “really” and omit it if possible
• Search for every occurrence of “very” and omit it if possible
• Search for every occurrence of “totally” and omit it if possible
• Search for every occurrence of “awesome” and reword it if possible
• Search for every occurrence of the em dash — that’s this bit of punctuation right here — and rework it if possible

After we implemented these suggestions, our book was really very totally awesome. (:

We had planned on hiring a professional editor, but we got such good edits from our friends that we decided it wasn’t necessary. So our fourth draft became our final draft.

4. Copyright page

There’s one very important page in your book that will take some work to finish: the copyright page. As an example, you can take a look at the copyleft page for The Usual Error here.

First, file the paperwork to become a publishing business: a DBA for a sole proprietorship or partnership, or other paperwork to become an LLC. You don’t want to be an S-corp or a C-corp. You’ll need to call around to see which government office has these forms, then do a search to make sure nobody else has the same name. When picking the name for your publishing business, think big. If you later want to publish more books, you’ll want the name to be appropriate for those books too.

Now that you have a publishing company, you’ll need an ISBN. Every published book has a unique ISBN, and they cost money. At the time of this writing, they were $275 for a block of 10; you can buy them from ISBN.org. If you’re self-publishing, this is the only option that I know of.

Next, you’ll need get a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) for your book. Fill out the application here and they’ll get back to you, probably much more quickly than they say they will. (They got back to us later the same day.)

Now that you have all the numbers you want, you can finish your copyright page. We chose to release our book under the Creative Commons by-nc-sa license, which lets others share it, remix it, and tweak it, as long as they don’t make money from it, and as long as their tweaked versions are also distributed under the same license. We did this because our primary goal with this book is to spread useful information about communication, and we didn’t want copyright to be a block to that. Whatever copyright system and license you decide is best for you book, be sure to state it here on the copyright page.

5. Book design and cover design

Now that last pesky page is complete, and you’re done with your final draft! YAY! Treat yourself to something nice! All that’s left now is outsourcing, paperwork, and technical stuff.

I had considered learning how to do the book design and cover design myself, but it would have taken a while and I would have needed to buy and learn some new software like Adobe InDesign, so we outsourced the cover art to our illustrator Marty Whitmore and the book and cover design to Megan Elizabeth Morris, who is a fabulous web designer as well as an excellent designer of all sorts.

Unless you know how to use a professional design program (MS Word does not count; it’s a word processor, not a design program) and you know about bleed, DPI, PPI, CMYK, and embedding fonts in PDFs, then I suggest you outsource this, too. If you wrote your book in HTML, at this point you’ll probably need to convert it to a Word document if your book designer uses Adobe InDesign, because it imports Word documents more easily. But hang onto your HTML version if you’ve got it, because it will prove useful if you later decide to release an e-book or a Kindle version.

Your book designer will make sure your pages are the exact right size for your book, make sure the fonts and margins look great, and take care of a lot of technical things that I don’t even understand but I know are very important. Take a look at this before and after. Notice how the before looks like a random web page or Word document, and the after looks like an actual page from an actual book? That’s the importance of book design.

Oh! That reminds me: this is the time for you to decide the dimensions of your book. Pick up a few books from your bookshelf and measure them. Based on the type and genre of your book, you probably want to pick the same dimensions as a similar book. For The Usual Error, we wanted people to be able to carry it around easily, so we chose 8″ x 5″. Also, this is the time to choose hardcover or paperback. We went with paperback because we felt it was more friendly.

6. Printing, fulfillment, and retail

When your book designer is done designing your book, you get to fill out some more paperwork! (:

Now it’s time to think about how your book will be printed and how people will buy it. “Fulfillment” just means “how orders get from the person who wants to buy it to the person who has it”, as well as other details like who keeps it in stock, where, and how much. We chose a printer who does print-on-demand so we wouldn’t have to deal with fulfillment ourselves.

We chose the print-on-demand (POD) company Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI) for our printer and focused on Amazon as the main way people will purchase it. Lulu is just a middleman between you and LSI. If you choose not to outsource your book design, Lulu might provide some useful value to you, but otherwise you might as well deal with LSI directly and cut out the middleman. Another nice thing about LSI is that once LSI has your book and it’s set up correctly, it will automatically appear on Amazon.

So, sign up with LSI (Lightning Source, Inc.). Your Primary book category is probably “Trade Publisher“. Upload your finished product: the cvr.pdf and text.pdf, the finished product that your book designer and cover designer produced. Set your retail (list) price and your wholesale discount. I suggest 25%; setting your discount higher means less money for you and doesn’t yield any benefit at all. Nobody will be able to order your book for retail price, because LSI doesn’t sell directly to customers. The only people allowed to buy from LSI are wholesalers: bookstores, distributors, and resellers like Amazon. They will buy your book at the wholesale price, which is the retail price discounted by the percentage you chose.

  Wholesale price = Retail price * (100% - wholesale discount)

So if you set your retail price to $15.00 and your discount to 20%, you can compute your wholesale price like so:

  Wholesale price = $15.00 * (100% - 20%)

  Wholesale price = $15.00 * 80%

  Wholesale price = $12.00

Your cut of the profit is the wholesale price less LSI’s printing costs. If their printing costs were $4 per book, your profits would be

  Your profit = Wholesale price - Printing costs

  Your profit = $12.00 - $4.00

  Your profit = $8.00

For our book, we selected the following options:

• US POD Direct Distribution
• US POD Wholesale Distribution
• UK/Europe POD Wholesale Distribution
• No sales tax exemption

Direct distribution means you can order copies for yourself. Wholesale distribution means that other companies (like Amazon) can order it. (Technically there are other companies in the loop, like Ingram, but you don’t need to worry about that at this point.)

Also, use cream paper, not white. It’s easier on the eyes and makes your book look more professional.

7. Marketing

Now we come to the really fun part: marketing! For The Usual Error, we already had a bunch of interested people, because we’ve been presenting communication workshops for years, we have a blog about communication, and we have a bunch of friends who respect us.

Squeezing an entire how-to about marketing into this already-huge article isn’t feasible, but if you’re self-publishing, you’re probably self-marketing too. Here’s a super-short list of pointers:

• Start a blog. We agree with Seth Godin that this is the #1 best thing you can do to market your business — or your book.
• Do everything Naomi says.
• Make an event out of launching your book. It’s exciting and fun, and can generate oodles of sales and buzz. Dave Navarro, a launch coach, can help you out with this.

Regardless of how you do your marketing, be sure to sign up with Amazon Associates and you’ll make an extra 5% or more from everyone who buys your book through your affiliate link.

8. Rest on your laurels!

You’re now a published author! Congratulations! Leave a comment and say hi, and we’ll show you the secret handshake. (:

Here’s a list of web pages, books, and people who helped me learn all this crazy stuff. You may find them useful, too.

• Creative Minds Press
• Susan Daffron of Logical Expressions, Inc.
• The Yahoo self-publishing group
• Aiming at Amazon
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Publishing

Last but not least, remember to enjoy the journey! Writing a book is fun, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did! (:

I used to love Torrid. But I think their marketers need to be fired and replaced with Seth Godin, or someone on his team.

A while back, I accidentally subscribed to Torrid’s newsletter (which is almost impossible to un-subscribe from). I get something from them nearly every day. Too much! It’s become spam, and I never even look at it anymore!

On top of that, they do this horrible thing: they offer me $25 off^*.

*a purchase of $100 or more

This is not a reward. Gah! I don’t feel rewarded at all! I feel like they’re trying to trick me! The “fine print” is way down at the end of the image-intensive email, buried in a bunch of stupid crap stuff I never read, so I nearly missed it the first time around. The second, third, fourth, and so on times, however, I searched it out.

The offer varies, but the catch remains the same.

If you are going to reward me, actually reward me! If you want to tempt me into your store, give me $25 off with no catch - or even just $10 or $5. This fake reward with a catch not only doesn’t bring my business, it pushes me away. I won’t buy from them anymore because I’m super irritated at the spam in my inbox full of fake discounts.

Another thing that really gets me is the fake “handwritten” thank you. Last year, we’d ordered from Mr Gatti’s Pizza some ten times in as many weeks. (We don’t eat that way anymore, thank the gods.) On our last order, there was a handwritten note that simply said, “We appreciate your business! Thank you!”

Sweet, right?

Well, had it been real… The very same note, in the very same handwriting, was on the second pizza box. I was perplexed - who can write every letter exactly the same twice? Waaaaait a minute! This note is Xeroxed!

Yup. A fake note of gratitude, made to look real. Come on, people. A little real gratitude for your loyal customers would be a thing to remark on, something to make us talk about your company and you for a long time, and something that would likely bring far, far more business to you in the long run. I mean, really, how hard is it to write a little thank you note, personalize it, and send it to every order for a week (once, on one box)? Not that hard - and I know! We just signed and personalized 100 books!

Torrid may worry that I won’t spend enough money there to make giving me $25 off with no catch a safe bet. But had they done so, I’d've spent far more than $25 measly bucks there by now. Maybe there’s a few shmucks who’ll go in and spend exactly $25, use their certificate, and leave having spent not a single penny of their own money, but by and large, customers will go in and spend at least $50, because that’s how much a single frigging shirt costs there.

No catch, big benefits for your company. Put a catch on there, and not only do I not feel rewarded, I feel cheated. Bad move.

I’ve already gone on about our friend and illustrator, Martin Whitmore and his awesome business model. Today, I’m inspired by him again!

In addition to his awesome work on the Usual Error book, Marty also has many other awesome projects. Today, I’m inspired by my own guest appearance in his crazy zombie vs stripper webcomic, Tasty Flesh.

As I mentioned before, Marty is working on a community commission (now closed). The more you donated, the more cool stuff you got, all the way up to input in the drawing and a majorly awesome hug. I haven’t gotten my hug yet, but I know it’ll be awesome.

When he emailed his mailing list, way back at the beginning of this community project, it came with a special bonus offer: anyone on the mailing list who donated a certain amount within the first 48 hours got all the cool stuff and also got a cameo in his webcomic as a zombie.

He rewarded his biggest fans for being his biggest fans by giving them an offer no one else would get, making it limited, and making them feel special and cool and appreciated.

Now, I am somewhat ambulothanatophobic (afraid of the walking dead, i.e. zombies), so the idea of being drawn as one of them wasn’t so appealing to me. Did that keep me from being an early contributor? Nope. Why? Because I know Marty, and I know that he would work with me to reward me in a way that would be rewarding rather than horrifying.

And he did. We talked about it, and decided on making my cameo be less walking dead and more mysterious.

Marty (and his partner Megan) is brilliant. He constantly comes up with interesting and cool ways to support his art so he can keep producing it. He rewards his fans honestly and genuinely. He consistently inspires Pace and me, and we keep stealing his brilliant ideas (with permission, of course!) and implementing them in our own Usual Error Project. I’m proud to be his friend and business partner.

I’m also delighted to be in the strip today (though I suspect I became a meal for those other zombies). It’s amusing and beautifully drawn. Check it out!

We want to reward and appreciate our biggest fans, too. If you join our mailing list, you’ll always be the first to know about everything we’re doing (without getting too many emails, we promise!), get big rewards and lots of appreciation - and we might even offer awesome hugs, too!

Being an entrepreneur is like being transgendered.

No, seriously. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about here. (:

First, you need to think really hard about what you want.

Becoming a new gender? Becoming a new business owner? First you’d better be sure that you’re following your heart. Search deep inside to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.

Once you know what you want, you’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it.

There are lots of obstacles to both entrepreneurs and transgendered people, especially low-income transgendered people. But when you know what you want and are passionate about achieving it, you’ll do your best to overcome each and every one of those obstacles.

You’ll need to become good at learning new things.

Estradiol. Progesterone. How your body will change. The thrice-bedamned Harry Benjamin Standards of Care. How to find a good therapist. Surgery. How to come out to friends and family. How to come out at work. How to come out to someone you’re interested in dating (or are already dating). Clothes. Makeup. You can talk in the restroom now! Eye contact. Speech patterns. How to change your voice. How to change your body language. Sex. Orgasm. Social gender roles. How to be a lesbian. How to date women as a woman. How to be bisexual. How to date men as a woman.

Accounting. Distribution. Fulfillment. Marketing. Permission marketing. Tax law. How to incorporate. Social networking. Blogging. Podcasting. Vidcasting. Skype. Pricing. SEO. Web design. Wordpress plugins. Marketing copy. How to tell people about awesome stuff without being annoying. How to make friends with awesome people without being annoying. How to ask for help. Self-publishing. Business planning. E-commerce. Credit card machines. Referral/partner programs. How to find a good venue.

You will recreate yourself, and it will be painful.

When I transitioned from male to female, I created a new social persona for myself, one that better fit my internal self-concept. My friends and family had gotten used to interacting with Boy Pace for 20-odd years. When I became Girl Pace, I changed in many ways, although in many ways I stayed the same. Everyone’s social expectations were flummoxed because I no longer fit into the same social role. It was uncomfortable and awkward, both for me and for everyone else. I would sometimes spend less time with my friends who had a hard time adjusting, to avoid having my feelings hurt due to male pronouns, social awkwardness, and feeling misunderstood. This shift was difficult and painful. I spent more time with some of my new friends who hadn’t met me before I transitioned, because I didn’t have to deal with their old, stale expectations. Also I hung out with several other trans people because we were interested in talking about similar things.

Becoming an entrepreneur was surprisingly similar. I created a new social persona for myself, one that better fit my internal self-concept. In this case, my self-concept shifted from “a smart, creative computer geek” to “a passionate, effective lightworker who turns her dreams into reality.” My friends and business associates had gotten used to interacting with Geek Pace for almost 30 years. When I became Lightworker Pace, I changed in many ways, although in many ways I stayed the same. Everyone’s expectations were flummoxed because I no longer fit into the same role. It was uncomfortable and awkward. I would sometimes spend less time with my friends who had a hard time adjusting, to avoid becoming demotivated or depressed by negativity, because we shared fewer common interests, and because I felt misunderstood. This shift was difficult and painful. I spent more time with some of my new friends who hadn’t met me when I was Geek Pace, because I had more in common with them and we were interested in talking about similar things. More of my new friends were also entrepreneurs and lightworkers, whereas my old friends were living lives more like Geek Pace’s life that I had joyously left behind.

You will face your fears.

What if I turn out to be an ugly girl? What if my family disowns me? What if I don’t have what it takes to make this happen? What if I can’t do it because I don’t have enough money? What if I go broke? What if all my friends hate me? What if I lose my job? What if I lose the respect of my friends and peers? What if someone uses male pronouns for me in front of everyone? What if they laugh at me? What if I look ridiculous? What if they see through me and realize that I’m terrified? What if I lose my true self in a jumble of newly practiced body language and speech patterns? What if my voice is too deep? What if no one will want to date me? What if no one will accept me as I am? What if no one will love me?

What if no one wants to buy what we’re selling? What if no one finds our services valuable? What if no one cares? What if I don’t have what it takes to make this happen? What if I go broke? What if I get a lot of flak and negative comments? What if someone criticizes me in front of everyone? What if they laugh at me? What if they see through me and realize that I’m terrified? What if I lose my true self in a jumble of dollar signs and business plans? What if I lose my friends because I accidentally turn them into networking acquaintances? What if I burn out due to overwork? What if I fail because I don’t work hard enough? What if no one likes what I have to offer? What if no one likes me?

You will fail without self-knowledge and inner strength.

These fears will eat you alive if you let them. The only way to succeed is to truly know yourself — to grow into a person who is knowledgeable and self-confident enough to be able to handle those fears. Let your fears inform you, thank your fears for guiding you to a touchy spot, and then dig in. Figure out what the root cause of your fear is, and then use that as fertilizer for personal growth. Grow bigger than your fears. Embiggen and destuckify! (:

Entrepreneurship and gender transition are crash courses in fear-facing. Your issues will come up. Your landmines will be stepped on. Your triggers will be triggered. Each of these disasters is an opportunity for growth. (”Another fucking opportunity for growth”, as my friend Reesa says.) If you can maintain a positive attitude even through the toughest challenges, if each time you fall down you learn a little more about how to get back up, then your self-work will eventually manifest in outward success.

I wish you the best on your path of becoming.

My friend Oliver recently read Naomi’s post on how we killed social media and wrote a reply that inspired me to share my own opinion on the matter.

Naomi’s point is that unscrupulous marketers found the loopholes in social media like Digg, Twitter, and del.icio.us, and filled them full of crap. Now they’re not helping anyone anymore, because everything is so full of crap. The loopholes have been closed. There’s no free lunch and there are no corners to cut. You can no longer interrupt people into paying attention to you.

It seems hopeless, doesn’t it?

It seems like an endless spiral of greed and oversaturation. But it’s not hopeless, and here’s why.

As spammy marketers flood social media more and more, people are getting hungrier and hungrier for real quality and real people. The people who are honest and have something of value to say and to offer will shine through like diamonds in the rough. They may not shine through on Digg, Twitter, or del.icio.us, but they’ll shine through where it counts — in the opinions of your friends and other people you trust.

Now that social media is broken, people will fall back to the old way of doing things: having conversations with their friends. And if your friends find a diamond in the rough — if they find something remarkable — they’ll tell you about it.

So, if you’re a small business owner, what does this mean to you?

Your friends telling their friends about you seems irrelevant, right? I mean, you can only have so many friends, and each of them can only have so many friends. So how do you get your small business to grow?

The answer: There are just two things you need to succeed. You need to be REMARKABLE and AUTHENTIC.

You need to be remarkable to get people to make remarks about you. You can’t pay for fake remarkableness anymore, because the only remarks that people listen to these days are remarks that come from trusted sources. To be remarkable, you must be valuable and you must be worth talking about.

You need to be authentic to get people to trust you. People have been burned too many times by fake viral marketing campaigns and corporate blogs that preach transparency while actually lying through their teeth.

Seth talks about how criticism hurts his feelings and gets him down. Naomi posts sweet things about her son. Havi talks about feeling lonely. Steve admits stupid things he did when he was a teenager.

These things make you human. These things make you real. These things let the person on the other side of the screen know that they’re interacting with a real human being and not just some faceless marketing whore. And yes, people can trust brands, but for small businesses, that’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that people trust people.

Seth, Naomi, Havi, Steve — Kyeli and I consider all these people our friends, even if it’s only a one-way deal. (That’s how you can break through the monkeysphere.) We trust them. We recommend them. We tell our friends how awesome we think they are. We’re doing so right now, in fact. (:

Next time you find yourself knee-deep in SEO or with your nose to the social media grindstone, just remember: Be remarkable. Be authentic. That’s all you need.

If it wasn’t, you never would have found this article. (;

Dear readers,

Remember the 30-day blog-o-thon? Where we promised Steve Pavlina that our blog would be in the top million websites within 30 days?

We reached our goal today! 913,398, baby!!! We reached our 30-day goal on Day 11! Obviously, this means we need a bigger goal. Let’s see how much higher we can get in the next 19 days! (:

Thank you all very much for reading. We appreciate you!

When we first started talking about making the Usual Error Project a big part of our lives, we felt conflicted between our goal of helping people and our goal of making money. Not only did we argue about the priorities of these goals, we argued about whether it was ethical to charge money for it at all!

Our situation reminded me of what I’d read about conscious capitalism — I thought it sounded pretty skeezy. It sounded like commoditizing spirituality; selling things that really “ought” to be given away for free. Commoditizing helpfulness and goodwill felt like the same sort of thing to me.

This is the story of why I changed my mind.

After many discussions, some arguments, and at least one drastic life change, we finally agreed on our goals for the Usual Error Project. Here they are, from highest priority to lowest.

1. Help people
2. Enjoy the journey
3. Make money, so we can do more of #1 and #2

When we run our business according to these goals, when we live our lives according to these priorities, amazing things happen. We feel wholeheartedly awesome about making more money (no longer ambivalent or skeezy!), because every dollar feeds our highest priority goal of helping more people. It creates a positive feedback effect, an upward spiral of positive energy and awesomeness!

We’ve found that this upward spiral only manifests if it’s put into action, not just words. If you talk about helping people later, or enjoying the journey later (the deferred life plan), you’ll end up making money later, too. Run your business at the beginning like an itty bitty version of what you envision it being in the future.

Putting this into action has been really fun and rewarding! We took the majority of our startup capital and gave it to a friend to help him achieve his dreams. When another friend generously loaned us some additional money, we agreed on a fun interest rate and he decided to do “something awesome” with the money so gained. We’re rearranging our personal budget (which, in a small business, has a big impact on our business budget) so we can help out a couple of our family members in what we hope will be a win/win situation.

It feels really good, and it makes our priorities concrete. Before we’ve even made a single dollar in profit (in this incarnation), we’re helping people. And now we know, concretely, that when we make more money, we will help more people.

Knowing this — feeling it in your gut — changes everything. I no longer have twinges of guilt when telling potentially interested people about the Usual Error Project. I used to worry about bothering people or being perceived as a spammer. I’m still just as strongly against annoying people and just as strongly against spamming and other forms of interruption marketing, but I no longer feel any twinges when I talk about the Usual Error Project (or our blog) with potentially interested people, for example on a relevant mailing list. Because I’m not doing anything bad, I’m not trying to sucker people out of a buck, I’m not acting selfishly. I’m trying to help people, first and foremost.

What are your goals and priorities in your business? Are you making them real? Are you living according to them? Or are they just words on a piece of paper labeled “Mission Statement” or “To-Do”?